CAVALRY TACTICS
DURING WORLD WAR I
At the
beginning of World War I, mounted troops were still considered as the main
component of offensive warfare. In battle, members of the cavalry carried a
sword, rifle, (for use when dismounted) and sometimes a lance. Cavalry regiments
were also equipped with one or two machine guns carried by a team and cart.
In 1914 most of the major armies had around a third of their strength in
horsemen. The British, French, and German armies all considered their cavalry to
be an elite force and had considerable influence over the tactics used during
battles. Nearly all the senior officers in the British Army were ex-cavalry
officers and it has been claimed that this explained the type of tactics used on
the Western Front.
The reconnaissance
function of the cavalry during World War I was rendered obsolete by the use of
aircraft such as the Farman MF-II, Avro 504, and the BE-2.
The cavalry were of limited value in trench warfare. However, during major
offensives, mounted troops were still massed in large numbers waiting the
opportunity to charge the enemy lines. When the cavalry were used on the Western
Front, it was found to be completely ineffective against machine gun fire. The
British cavalry was more successful against less well-organized armies such as
the Turks during the Battle
of Gaza.
Philip Gibbs, a war correspondent for
the British Army, watched the preparation for the major offensive at the Somme
in July, 1916.
"Before dawn, in the darkness, I stood with a mass of cavalry opposite
Fricourt. Haig as a cavalry man was obsessed with the idea that he would break
the German line and send the cavalry through. It was a fantastic hope, ridiculed
by the German High Command in their report on the Battles of the Somme which
afterwards we captured."
"In front of us was not a line but a fortress position, twenty miles deep,
entrenched and fortified, defended by masses of machine-gun posts and thousands
of guns in a wide arc. No chance for cavalry! But on that night they were massed
behind the infantry."
The Daily Chronicle
(British Newspaper - 1 December, 1917)
"The battle has continued today, and our troops and tanks have been engaged
in heavy fighting round Borlon Wood and at Fontaine-Notre-Dame, to the east of
it, which we lost yesterday for a time, after a sharp counter-attack upon our
Seaforth Highlanders, who entered it on Wednesday night with tanks.
Tanks and cavalry co-operated in this attack, and the tanks were a most powerful
aid, and cruised round and through the village, where they put out nests of
machine-guns. The cavalry then went on into Anneux; but the first patrol had to
retire because of the fierce machine-gun fire that swept down the streets."
Oskar Kokoschka served in the
Austro-Hungarian cavalry on the Eastern Front.
"I had done all my examinations, but did
not understand much about tactics, and I always volunteered to ride the advance
patrol, with an experienced sergeant. So although I was an officer, my sergeant
was in command of the patrol. At the beginning, we were not wearing field-grey.
Our uniforms, red, blue and white, stood out only too well, and as I rode out, I
felt spied upon by an unseen enemy in the dense, dark foliage of the forests.
The first dead that I encountered were young comrades-in-arms of my own, men
with whom, only a few nights earlier, I had been sitting round the camp-fire in
those Ukrainian forests, playing cards and joking. Not much more than boys they
were, squatting there on the moss in their bright-colored trousers, a group of
them round a tree trunk.
From a branch a few paces further on a cap dangled, and on the next tree a
dragoon's fur-lined blue cloak. He who had worn these things himself, hung
naked, head downward, from a third tree."
